EWI Forming Center Consortium

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Forming Center Consortium

The center supports automotive, aerospace and other manufacturing industries. Advanced forming and joining is one of eleven cross-cutting technologies pivotal to enabling U.S. manufacturing innovation and competitiveness.

Advanced materials and net-shape forming methods can reduce materials usage and manufacturing cost, while improving performance. However, optimization of part designs, forming processes, and tooling designs to achieve these benefits requires an understanding of material formability, forming process parameters, tool wear and quality control methods.

EWI established the EWI Forming Center (EWI-FC) in collaboration with The Ohio State University’s Center for Precision Forming (OSU-CPF) to serve as a nexus of applied research and thought leadership focusing on sheet metal forming and forging processes.

Goals

Develop and advance innovative forming processes, tooling, and equipment that can lead the growth of manufacturing competitiveness and business

Provide a technology, knowledge and training base to industry for:

Process development and improvement, materials evaluation and development, and training students and engineers for the industry

Bolster fundamental research of forming and joining by cooperating with the academia

Grow as the most innovative and largest center for the forming technology in the North America

Technical Focus

Formability Services

Lubricant Evaluation

Forming Process Design

Innovative Forming Technology

Workforce Development

Current Projects

INTELLIGENT SERVO-CONTROLLED FORMING VEHICLE STRUCTURES

The project objective is to develop an algorithm to intelligently control servo-press parameters. The proposed servo-controlled forming process (SCFP) can offer the stamping industry an intelligent, simple tool that integrates NDE measurements of incoming material properties, data acquisition and monitoring in production, and accurate predictions of final product properties. In addition, the SCFP can provide critical process information to optimize servo- press parameters, algorithms to control the force/speed profile, and quality data.

EVALUATING LUBRICANTS AND TOOL COATINGS FOR WARM FORMING OF ALUMINUM AND MAGNESIUM ALLOYS

The automotive stamping industry is considering warm forming technology to form commercially available lightweight and less-formable aluminum 6xxx-7xxx alloys, as well as magnesium alloys. This work will develop reliable methods to evaluate lubricants with aluminum and magnesium alloys under warm forming conditions, recommendations for lubricants and tool coatings, and representative coefficients of friction for finite element analysis.

REAL-TIME NDE-BASED MONITORING OF MATERIAL PROPERTIES

The goal is to develop real-time monitoring tools based on NDE for variations of incoming material properties and trim-edge quality to reduce scrap rates and edge cracking in production. This project will lead the deployment of the real-time NDE-based monitoring method/technique that can be used to monitor sheet material properties and trimmed edge quality to avoid any part failures during stamping.

ENHANCEMENT OF THE AUTOMATION FOR THE INTELLIGENT SERVO CONTROL FORMING PROCESS﻿

This project will enhance automation for the intelligent SCFP toward the production application. The objective is to integrate and validate the test cell with the upgraded automation and equipment.